Invasive Species

[Cedars]

add to the list

 

Lion fish

Flathead Catfish

Large Mouth Bass

Earthworms (European species, introduced to the US)

to name a few more

 

Nice additions but I want to clarify something.

Flathead catfish are introduced depending on your location in the USA. They are native to my favorite river, the St. Croix and the Mississippi.

 

Same with Largemouth bass (native to N. America, but I am unsure exactly where). It has been introduced into formerly Non Largemouth lakes elsewhere in the USA.

 

Some earthworms (defining earthworm as all worms except night crawlers) are native to the USA, some are introduced. In Minnesota, all earthworms were introduced. There is some debate as to whether a type of night crawler is native, or introduced. Canadian red night crawler I think (going from memory). I know the introduced to Minnesota worm part was something I did not know until either 2007 or 2008.

[ipetrus]

Welcome to the wild woolly whacky world of invasive species definitions and categorizations. Every species is native to somewhere. Unfortunately for those who like their science in Fox News sound byte size doses, trying to ram a particular species into an arbitrary geo-political space is usually messy in extremis. Gardeners in Maryland purchase purple coneflower because they are told it is native. But native to where? And with climate change superimposed, the new question is native to when? Biome or ecosystems do not have definite edges so placing a species into a particular region is by definition an exercise in futility at some boundary point. Of course we can add the idea of native plants with native animals for native Americans, but unlike 20th century Germans we get hoisted on our own historic petard because we are caught by our definition of native American unless of course you happen to be a native American.

[Moontanman]

Nice additions but I want to clarify something.

Flathead catfish are introduced depending on your location in the USA. They are native to my favorite river, the St. Croix and the Mississippi.

 

 

Flathead catfish, Pylodictis olivaris, is native to the Mississippi river and it's tributaries. where I live in NC it has been introduced to the Cape Fear River and it is having a negative impact on the native bullhead catfish and sunfish population. My point in adding these fish to the list is that just because a fish is native to one part of North America doesn't mean it is native to another part.

 

Earth worms from Europe are having a negative impact where they have been introduced in North America, even if they look like the native earth worms. Even something as low as a worm makes a difference. where I live there are introduced flat worms, they are huge, as much as a 1/2" wide and several inches long. They eat Earth worms, I'm not sure of the environmental impact but they are an example of a weird exotic and they came from potted plants brought in for landscaping.

 

I thought it was necessary to point these examples out because many people seem to think that exotics all come from some far away tropical country. This is not true and it also bears repeating the some of our "native" fish are causing problems in other parts of the world. sunfish, bullheads, and even trout are causing problems in other parts of the world. Most of these released exotics were placed where ever they now are due to someone thinking that these animals would improve things for some reason or other or someone missed the animals from back home an thought it would be nice if their favorite bird or fish was in the local area.

 

Probably the two worst offenders from the stand point of the fish world are food fish or fish farm releases and recreational fishing releases. silver carp and grass carp both brought her to improve some aspect of the environment and were supposed to be controlled so they couldn't establish themselves here but of course it didn't work out that way.

[maikeru]

The wonderful carp of Utah Lake:

 

Utah Lake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I used to fish for those when I was a kid. :/

[Ganoderma]

Invasive species are a real concern for sure. Taiwan is an island of introduced species, the worst are probably the people lol.

 

but something that always really annoys me is we (our governments or appropriate agencies) are seeming to go so far in the other direction that they are stopping, or trying to stop, natural spread of species. I find it rather strange, if a plant/animal is naturally going in that direction, i call that evolution/natures way. but we are even stopping this now to protect our investments i guess.

 

a good example is on Vancouver Island (coastal BC, Canada) there are no Grizzly bears, only black bears. On the mainland there are both. but the odd time there is a Grizzly bear that "island hops" its way over to Vancouver Island. upon its arrival, it enjoys a nice new home until it is discovered and either shot or relocated. I know there are many people who think that is good, but its too much like playing god for my liking and seems that we are putting up walls saying that this species distribution is HERE, and we will not allow it to naturally move outside this blue dot on the map.

 

for me, this is just wrong. thankfully in the last few billion years nature was not as confined and could give rise to new and wonderful things.